Thank you all for your responses. jpsdad rephrased my thoughts precisely.
I have only just started feeding about a handful of pellets a day. Some of the BG in my pond came from a pond where they were fed, I suspect those were the first to eat the pellets in my pond. Followed by one nice LB.
Based on the idea of "real" food in the fall, I have a small pond on the back property that had BG when I bought the land. I stocked fatheads and shiners there but the BG ate all the fatheads. I plan to pump it out and get rid of the BG then use it to grow bait fish for the big pond. If I wait until later in the fall, I could take all the bait fish and BG from that pond and dump them into the larger pond for the winter forage. If successful, maybe i can stock the little pond each spring and raise enough bait for the following winter.
I believe I also need to start removing some of the smaller bass as my pond has continued to produce more in the 8-12 inch range.
